John Buchan

He Has Three Ambitions

The author of Greenmantle, Midwinter, The Three Hostages (one of the finest romances of modern times) was in Manhattan the other day for a few hours. Lieutenant Colonel John Buchan is a short, quiet-spoken, modest English author. In those characteristics, he is like Walter de la Mare and W. Somerset Maugham, our other English visitors of the moment. They arrived without blaring of trumpets--and both Buchan and Maugham departed quietly, after seeing a few things at the theatre and saying "how-do-you-do-goodbye" to a few friends.

When I met John Buchan the other day, I said to him: "How I should like to find time to read your History of the Great War." His reply was: "Well, there are a million words of it!" He is not only a writer of stirring romantic novels, but the best historian, so far, of the recent War. In fact, two talents--literary and historical --became evident early in his career; for he won prizes in both subjects while at Oxford, where he was educated after preliminaries at Glasgow University.

He was born in Scotland, in 1875, at Perth, of an old Border family. His mother was a cousin of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Buchan regards writing as his avocation. He was called to the English bar in 1901. He has seen duty in South Africa--both worked and shot big game there. He has collaborated in writing a legal textbook on taxation of foreign income. He is partner in Thomas Nelson & Sons, one of the largest publishing houses in the world. Nor has he escaped politics; he once stood for his county as Unionist candidate for Parliament. His War career was brilliant, progressing from newspaper correspondent, intelligence officer in active battle to Director of Information under the Prime Minister (Lloyd George) and the War Cabinet.

A man of many interests, and one of action--thoroughly admirable. I like this recent statement of his ambitions: "I regard business as my profession, writing ,as my amusement; and it looks as if some kind of politics was going to be my duty. I have three ambitions in each sphere: To write a full Life of General Robert E. Lee; to make the best literature accessible to the poorest purse and in any language; and to do a little to help bring about the full understanding of America and the British Empire, which I regard as the biggest thing that can come out of the War and the main guarantor of the future."